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Playback speed limited to 1x

BeyondPod team,
I was excited to play with the Chromecast I received from Santa so I fired up BeyondPod and it worked very well with one limitation; I'm limited to 1x playback speed. I'm used to listening to podcasts at 2x. Is this a limitation you plan to remedy? Hope to see an update soon!

UK (BP Team member from Jun 2012 to Mar 2017), http://blog.juwlz.co.uk/

Posts

4,169

Hi and welcome to the forum.

I'm afraid BeyondPod has no control over this whatsoever as things stand. It's not a BeyondPod limitation, it's a ChromeCast / streaming one.

If you play a downloaded episode directly on the device, BeyondPod has ways to tell the player what speed to play at. However, with ChromeCast, all it can do is request the ChromeCast player to stream an episode directly from the web, starting at a particular point, and the ChromeCast player itself takes over at that point, just keeping your device up to date with progress.

For the record, even when playing on the local device (without ChromeCast), it's not possible to stream podcasts at anything other than x1 speed. Only downloaded files can be speed adjusted, and ChromeCast does not (currently) allow casting of local files.

Julie, thanks for the info. I wasn't aware of the limitation. Any chance the ChromeCast will provide this functionality in the future? I assume that's all in Google's hands or maybe you guys can influence it since you're part of the initial ChromeCast app rollout.
-Tom

UK (BP Team member from Jun 2012 to Mar 2017), http://blog.juwlz.co.uk/

Posts

4,169

As long as Chromecast only supports web streaming, it's a complete non-starter.

I have no inside information on what the future holds for Chromecast, other than publicly available information, rumours & speculation.

I have heard, for instance, that Google's plan for Chromecast is that they want worldwide release (during 2014?), and for manufacturers of AV equipment to build in support for casting without needing a dongle, and that every appropriate mobile app should able to support it (which implies casting of local content well as web streaming). But even then, it's the player on the Chromecast itself that will do the actual work.

I imagine Google's plans are more focussed on expanding existing functionality to a wider audience at this point, and that casting local content will be next on the priority list.

Much as it would be nice to think so, I doubt that the BeyondPod team will really have much influence over Google's plans, despite them allowing us relatively early access.

One tip for those running at least android 4.4 (I think 4.4.2 and above, but forget the exact version it was added) and many recent devices, Android 4.4 added the "Cast Screen" feature, which operates a bit differently from regular app-level Chromecast. As mentioned above, app-level Chromecast simply hands-off the stream to the Chromecast device (which is also why you may get playback errors more often listening via Chromecast vs. listening via phone/tablet). In any case, if you use the "Cast Screen" feature of Android, it simply mirrors the display of your local device to your TV--the app and everything is still running/playing on your local device, and only the display is mirrored to the TV. Your TV essentially becomes a monitor for everything on your device's display, not simply an app--generally it's best to use your phone/tablet in landscape orientation to match most TV dimensions.

What this all means is that you can play downloaded podcasts at any speed on your phone/tablet, and using "Cast Screen", you can mirror the display on your TV via Chromecast, in which it plays on your TV at that same speed since your local device (and hence the BeyondPod app) is still controlling the playback. Again--this is only possible if you have at least Android 4.4.2 and a device that support Andorid's "Cast Screen". I use this method to practice listening to other languages slowed-down using my Nexus 5 phone, and it works fine.

UK (BP Team member from Jun 2012 to Mar 2017), http://blog.juwlz.co.uk/

Posts

4,169

Thanks for the tip!

Presumably this differs from normal ChromeCast support in that the app still has to be in the foreground while you're using it? (I have the capability to cast screen on my phone, but I've never had occasion to use it.)

It doesn’t matter if the app is in the foreground or background—it works the same as using your phone without casting, so if the app works fine while backgrounded with regular use, then it will work the same with screen casting. The only difference with screen casting is that the entire phone/tablet screen is mirrored on the TV, and the audio is redirected to the TV.

A side benefit of the screen cast method is that it is also much more reliable. Since it is playing the local file on the phone (not streaming over the Internet), I don’t get any of the playback errors that I frequently get while doing regular app-level casting, which is always a live stream between the Chromecast device and the remote podcast site, and thus susceptible to connection issues.